


their shadows must cover canada

by hellishrebuke



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Angst and Tragedy, Angsty Schmoop, Fake AH Crew, Fluff and Angst, Gang Violence, Gangs, Gen, Heavy Angst, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Mercenaries, Sad, Sad Ending, it's sad, sad beginning, they aren't great people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18699454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellishrebuke/pseuds/hellishrebuke
Summary: The Fake AH Crew have the world at their feet but a mole threatens to destroy everything they hold close.I made a playlist for this story - if you want to listen to it you can find it here :https://open.spotify.com/user/phmhbe2l3y3198o0xfyz0bchg/playlist/3ed2A41fHgXYyWnXBvW0wo?si=SiR6XeFBS7a6WAPn0dYg7g





	their shadows must cover canada

**Author's Note:**

> this is structured kind of strangely, if you've seen or heard the musical/movie the last five years it's structured like that with one character's storyline going backwards as the other's goes forwards.  
> I promise this will make sense as the story continues.
> 
>  
> 
> ((also there will be slow updates, I'm really sorry))

They sit in the boat in silence. The sheet of water below barely moving as if it too knows that this moment deserves peace. The boat shouldn’t be this silent, he thinks to himself, a party should be raging on right now, we should be blind drunk and planning to set the whole world on fire rather than sitting in silence on one of the fanciest yachts money could buy anyone and looking at the night sky painted on the canvas of the ocean. The other people on the boat were people that he recognised but also somehow didn’t; their eyes were not shining with mischief and all of the other joys that came with a hell of a lot of money and an almost equivalent amount of cheap booze, instead most of them were staring into the dark abyss beneath the boat.

One, usually burning bright with a passion almost as noticeable as the god-awful Hawaiian shirts they wore, was sitting by the steering wheel of the yacht, head resting in their hands and using their position as captain to allow them to not make eye contact with anyone on the boat under the guise of important work.

Another, an undying optimist who claimed cynicism as a shield from the world, rubbed at their eyes absentmindedly, hunched over in a seat that allowed them to peer over the starboard bow. They offered a friendly smile to everyone who glanced in his direction but mostly half smiled down at a silver and red can in their hands.

Over to the port side of the yacht a couple stood with their hands connected. They were whispering to each other softly and occasionally one of them let out a small laugh which they quickly sought to suppress. It seemed as though everyone had declared this a sad occasion where any semblance of joy had been strictly forbidden. The couple were leaning gently on the side of the ship whispering words of encouragement and calming to anyone who looked as though they needed it. They weren’t themselves either though, on a night like this they should be out on the town causing as much merry mayhem as possible before they decided to call it a morning and head off back home laughing at the top of their lungs as destruction followed dutifully behind them but instead they were on a boat, dressed in all black and not even daring to let a smile cross their faces.

Not far from the couple was another lone person staring into the ocean. Their usual babbling had ceased two days ago and although none of them would admit it he knew that everyone severely missed it. There were no questions tonight, no ludicrous scenarios to be discussed by all and laughed at happily and no strange noises that no human could truly interpret. They weren’t glowing like they usually were, instead they seemed to be doing everything that they possibly could to appear as small and insignificant as possible.

Another small group, two people who looked eerily alike for two people who weren’t actually related and a person who looked and acted a little like a child had become mysteriously taller, weren’t even looking at each other but seemed to be almost huddling for warmth as they stood in a disfigured line sometimes looking over the side of the boat but other times gazing at the bottom of their glasses as if they might suddenly discover the meaning of life at the bottom of what might be their fourth glass of moonshine.

A larger group of men and women stood at the back of the boat, they looked a little lost as if they weren’t entirely sure why they had been invited. To tell the truth they’d discussed the matter extensively and had eventually decided that the entire crew should be invited to the event even if they weren’t particularly in the know about what had happened. Two people with curly dark hair who seemed to be more in the know than the others were also taking a glance over the side of the yacht periodically as if they too were wishing on the reflected stars for some kind of miracle that could never come.

For his part he had never felt so simultaneously alone and with friends. The two empty seats beside him somehow so crushing and so barren and he wasn’t quite sure what to think other than the hot tub looked painfully empty and that he could really use a good time right about last week. The moonshine in his cup was getting dangerously low again and he knew that he’d probably had enough to drink and that he should probably switch to soft drinks now but at the same time somebody had to start the party or what was the point? They hadn’t gathered the entire crew together on what was actually a party yacht for everyone to cluster off and not talk to each other and even though they would both like the absence of a raging party if they were here they weren’t. He was. He was standing on this damned yacht getting looks from everyone that ranged from sympathetic to worried to genuinely wondering if he was going to go overboard so that he could be with the constellations, so that he could be as beautiful and yet unreachable as they were now and for some reason had always been. So he was going to have his party. He was going to get as drunk as he liked and drunk dial them at 4am and leave a sobbing voicemail on their phones because they didn’t have do deal with this. They didn’t have to see the final blow to the small family they’d managed to construct out of the ashes of the old ones. 

He handed out more moonshine to almost everyone and tried to explain to everyone that this was meant to be a celebration and that they should just celebrate right now and mope around later but people just watched him as if he was going insane and so he went to sit in the hot tub, fully clothed, on his own. It was kind of nice, he thought to himself, he could do the celebrating by himself. He could remember every single little happy thing that had ever happened in his head like a sort of prayer and he could look at the never-ending starry sky and the night in the sea and he could come to some kind of armistice with the universe. He could make a pact with the sky and   see every star supernova before him. _Now_ says the voice in his head that still hasn’t left him _not all stars supernova and besides, you’d die if they did._ Maybe that’s the point, he thinks back to the figment of his own imagination, maybe if I had to choose I’d go down in fireworks that would light up the whole galaxy and plaster our names across the universe in stardust. _It’s how I’ve always wanted to go_ concedes the distant voice _to become stardust and one day become a star._ You are, he thinks to himself, you always have been.

At certain points in the night he thinks everyone was right and that he is going mad because sometimes he just keeps hearing their voices. He supposes that that’s what happens when you know someone so well before they slip out of your life like a messed up Houdini trick, he supposes that no one can truly leave you which is a thought that is entirely too profound for this early in the morning. He can’t quite figure out how to turn on the bubbles, it’s not his yacht and usually someone else would do it, so it’s kind of like he’s just sitting in a bath mostly. He figures it’s OK, it’s warm and he’s too tired to deal with something as insignificant as not having bubbles in a hot tub.   
****

At some point the person who was at the wheel comes and joins him in the hot tub. They smile softly at him, don’t quite manage to meet his eyes and ask:

“How do you deal with it?”

He’s struck by the question. 

“I don’t know.” He answers honestly, “But someone once told me that humans were a lot like sharks.”

They laugh, a smile plays at the corners of their mouth for the first time that he can remember seeing in days.

“Go on.” They say, one eyebrow raised slightly in inquiry. He thinks that they know where he got this advice, he thinks that everyone on the whole boat knows who he learned his most important life lessons from and he also thinks that everyone may know who he taught his most valued information.

“Well,” he starts; trying to think of a way that he could possibly do this justice, “if a shark stops moving forwards it dies and it’s kind of like that for people too. You’ve got to keep on moving forward because if you stop for too long you’ll… well you’ll…”

“I know.” They say softly and he internally thanks them for doing so because if he had to fully explain the advice and where it came from then he would well and truly stop moving. “He was good to me, you know, before he left… He… Well, I’ve been trying to work out how we’ll do without him.” They leave it at that but he knows that they were going to tell him something about them. It hits him that there will probably be things that he’ll never learn about them and then it really hits him.

“We don’t have a name.”

“What?”

“We’ll never know his actual name.”

They sit together in silence with this revelation for a little while. A few more people join them slowly: the couple from the port side wander over and sit down with them, then the small group of people who haven’t yet found the meaning of life at the bottom of a glass of moonshine and then someone who isn’t quite up to babbling yet but has managed to tear themselves away from staring wistfully into the ocean by themselves. The silence is not strange anymore, the bubbles have been switched on and they have crammed as many people as they can into the hot tub with some people who were originally with the larger group sitting on the deck beside the hot tub. 

They stare out into space. The endlessness of the sky mingling with the ocean is astounding, there is almost no tangible boundary. It’s like infinity is calling to them all, whispering with the wind and yelling from the undiscovered depths of the ocean. The spring air is cool and he suspects that if he wasn’t drunk and sitting in a hot tub he would actually be quite cold but as it is he feels refreshed. He feels so alive.

 The next person that talks has wandered over to sit with their new group with their silver and red can. They set it on the side of the hot tub and get in. He wonders for a moment how much that suit that they are wearing cost and if the suit will recover from the time it will spend in the hot tub.

“You were right.” He says picking his can up and taking a sip, “They’d want us to be together, to make this a happy occasion.”

There is no particular acknowledgement of his words other than a small murmur through the group of people. They would want them all to be happy, to cling to life and to this small rock hurtling around space. He remembers them in the early days telling him about how he wanted to die like Romeo: on his own terms, in the arms of someone he loved, to be immortalised in legend not as he truly was but how he wanted to be and after he died he had wanted the same treatment too. _Cut me out_ he had said one night _and make me into stars._ He supposed that that moment had changed his life. The stars had no longer been just bright dots in the sky at night but the remnants of the beauty that had once roamed the Earth, shadows of people who were loved so much that the universe simply could not forget about them. He wondered if somewhere in the universe stars burned bright just for them, for all of the stupid and incredible things that they had done and would never do, for all that they would be remembered for. As a candle, he hoped, to guide them home to us.

The sea let them drift peacefully until dawn and by then, even though he was still incredibly sad that they had been lost, he was also incredibly grateful that he had even found them in the first place.


End file.
